


start a war

by 8611



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gore, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:53:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it all starts: she dares him to start a war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	start a war

**Author's Note:**

> Bit of myth!AU shenanigans. 
> 
> Cheat sheet: Derek is Ares, Lydia is War, and Stiles is Death.

This is how it all starts: she dares him to start a war. 

“Make it happen,” she says, and pulls her sunglasses down far enough that she can look at him over the top of them. They have brilliantly red frames, the color of her flaming hair. 

“I’m not yours to order around,” he says. 

“I didn’t give you an order, did I?” She asks. “A dare is not an order.”

He licks his lips and stares off, past the cafe tables and laughing couples. There is sunlight catching the edges of the world, and it reminds him of polished steel and iron. 

“You can’t tell me you’re not bored,” she says. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s a shame, you used to be so good at this.”

She stands up, adjusts her sunhat, and picks up her clutch. He does not speak, does not make eye contact, until she has started to turn away. 

“War, wait,” he says, and reaches out for her, although he stops himself. Clever boy, to pull a hand away from the fire. “When and where?”

“That’s your choice, Ares,” she says, and gives him a wicked smile before sweeping off. 

\---

He has fallen, like an Angel of War’s dogma, twice. He, as a rule, does not do it often. 

Here is what he loves instead: the rush of battle in his ears, the rock and roll of a bloody sea below his feet. Steel blades, men with the lust of battle in their eyes. Smoke rising from a destroyed plain. 

And yet, he has fallen those two times, for lips and hearts. 

Hekaterine stands, rising from a river of blood, on a field. There is a sword in one hand and a man’s head in another, his hair tangled around her fingers, and she smiles at him. 

She will, eventually, try to burn the gods out of their mountain, but at this moment, she places the head at his feet and offers him her blade. 

Guinevere draws the life out of a room of warriors, thick as smoke, and closes her eyes against the power, and when she opens them they are white. She pours him wine that is heavy and thick and much too red but goes down so sweetly. 

She nearly takes his life from him, with her lips and hands, but by this time he has made War’s acquaintance, and so Guinevere is Judged for her crimes, before her time is quite up, and sent down to the center of the earth. 

He dreams of that field, of that wine, of their eyes and mouths and hearts, and he does not fall again for a very long time. 

\---

For all he has done, for all he has killed, he has never met Death. He has had dealings with Osiris and Hades and Hel, but he has never met War’s Death. She speaks of him, when she speaks of her fellow riders, but she speaks of him the least. 

“Famine is lovely,” War says. “You would like him. Maybe not Pestilence so much, not many people like him, but I enjoy their company.”

“You would be the only one who thinks that way,” he says, and War rolls her eyes. 

“You’re a prude about your own nature,” she says. “You court, you covet death. And yet, you judge my friends.”

“I am not a harbinger of the apocalypse,” he points out.

“And neither are we, when we’re alone.” 

She takes another sip of wine, her crimson lips the same color as the liquid, and he thinks of Guinevere. 

\---

After millennia of walking the earth, he finally meets Death on a snowy day, in the far north. 

He has still not made good on War’s dare, not quite yet, but there are always corpses around him. 

There is a young man standing on a ridge, tucked into a heavy jacket, and Ares thinks nothing of him until the man slips and slides down the berm and into his path. 

“You’ve dropped something,” the man says, and points back. Ares looks over his shoulder, where he’s dragging the two bodies. One has lost a foot, and it sits, in the slick, bloody snow, a few feet away from its corresponding stump. 

“That’s fine,” Ares says. 

“You should really get rid of them,” the man says. 

“I’m working on it,” Ares says, sighing. “Get out of my way.”

“Here,” the man says, gesturing, and in a moment the bodies are gone, sparks trailing upwards into the snowy sky.

“Death,” Ares says, his breath steam in the cold air. “War sent you, I’d guess.” 

The man smiles at that, mocking up a little bow in the snow, arms outstretched. 

“The one and only,” he says. “She thinks you’ve been avoiding me.”

“You’re not the one I usually deal with,” Ares says. “You’re not part of my system.”

“Then what’s War?”

Ares has always wondered, but they’ve never discussed it. An arrangement, perhaps, for the best of both parties. 

Death links his hand through Ares’ arm, and leads him on into the swirling snow. He finds that he does not mind being led, somehow.

“I think I’ll have work for you,” Ares says, and Death grins at him, his face partially hidden by his hood. 

\---

This is how it ends, and this is how he falls for a third time: he starts a war. 

It is minor, a territorial dispute between islands, but it is enough. Bodies wash up on the blood-red sand, and Death walks down the beach, wearing a pair of Wayfarers the color of the waves. 

“Truth or dare?” Death asks, as he bends down to press a hand to a man’s heart. The sparks that spring from under his hand roll down the man’s skin, into the wet sand, and vanish into the water. 

“It’s my turn,” Ares says, hefting the rifle on his back a bit higher. 

“I was hoping you’d let me have a turn first.”

“Fat chance.”

“Fine, you do me then.”

Ares sighs, staring off down the beach. War is here, somewhere, he knows. She is probably on one of the boats off the coast, anchored in shallow water, where people are yelling at each other over maps, trying to piece together broken plans. 

“This is ridiculous,” Ares says. “We don’t have time for this.”

“We have all the time in the world,” Death says as he stands up, dusting off his hands. He moves a few steps further, and then, turning his face to the wind and digging his toes into the sand, he sits down on his heels and places his palms to the ground. 

Sparks fly from open mouths and bloody hearts, some to the sea, and some to the clouds, and Death’s smile is beautiful. 

“I’ll save you some time, though,” Death says, his voice quiet. “Truth.”

Ares looks to the horizon. The sun is setting, the edges of the world on fire, and he is reminded of a sister long gone, her hammer raised and her forge white hot. 

“Why do you take some bodies, instead of simply souls?” Ares asks at last. 

“Just doing what the Universe feels to be right,” Death says, and stands again, looking to Ares. There are sparks in his eyes and the light of the dying sun in his hair. 

In the dim light, Ares falls.


End file.
